Introduction to Goddess Pandora

The message on the Pandora Goddess card is:

Open the forbidden you. Discover your secrets, fears, phobias and demons. Embrace your beautiful darkness. What has long been hidden. Come into wholeness within yourself.

When I shuffled my Goddess deck this week to pull the Goddess of the Week and Pandora flew out I thought ‘Uh oh, here we go…’ 😬 I wouldn’t say of all the Goddesses to get she would exactly be my favourite…

But as the week has gone on I’ve realised she is a perfectly apt symbol both for the dark and increasingly bleak times we may feel we are in with the current pandemic crisis. And, more personally, the Goddess programme offering I’m currently working on...

The Myth of Pandora

But first things first, let me introduce you!

I’m sure y’all know the myth of Pandora but here's a little reminder:

As the story goes ...

Once up a time, a long time ago, Zeus was basically pissed that Prometheus had given man the secret of fire and, tyrant that he was, tying him to a rock was far too light a punishment so he decided to go after his brother, Epimetheus too. So he concocted a sneaky plan (I feel like that is LITERALLY all these gods and goddesses do all day is concoct sneaky plans) Anyway he ordered Hephaestus, the handyman, to make Zeus a daughter. Hephaestus made a beautiful woman out of clay and brought her to life. Zeus named his lovely new daughter Pandora and took her to Earth to see Epimetheus.

Zeus (classic narcissist btw 💁) made up some cock n’bull woe-is-me story to try to convince Epimetheus that he felt sooo terrible that his only brother, Prometheus, was chained to a rock (which HE did. hello gaslighting 🙄) and to go some way for making up for punishing his only brother would Epimetheus take his beautiful daughter Pandora in marriage?

Epimetheus was no fool. He totes knew Zeus was up to something sneaksy. But he loved Pandora at first sight.

So Zeus gave the newlyweds a gift. Some say it was a jar. Some say it was a box. Whatever it was, it was locked. It came with a note. The note said: "DO NOT OPEN." Attached to the note was a key. I mean…

You all know what happens next. It was Pandora whose curiosity got the better of her (which - by the way - it should be noted that some Feminist revisionist scholars say was deliberately later written into the myth as part of the culture at the time to demonstrate to everyone ‘women’s deceitful nature’ (🙄 and how clearly untrustworthy all women were BLAH BLAH BLAH)

ANYWAY one day, curiosity got the cat and she used the key to open the box. As she raised the lid, out flew all the wickedness and malevolence that Zeus had been stuffing crammed into that box for millennia to keep all the ills away from humanity. Pandora slammed the lid closed in shock, but it was too late.

She understood that she was a mere pawn in a great game played by the gods. In that gilded box, Zeus had hidden all everything that would plague man forever: sickness, death, turmoil, strife, jealousy, hatred, famine, everywhere the evil spread.

Pandora felt the weight of the world on her shoulders and looked at the gilded box that had turned rusty and hideous.

As if sensing her need, a warm and calming feeling shrouded her and she knew that not all was lost. Unknown to her, along with the evil feelings, she had also revealed hope, the only good thing that Zeus had trapped inside the box. From now on, hope would live with the humans forever, to give them peace whenever they felt that everything was coming to an end.

And Hope made all the difference in the world.

My Pandora experience

No little girl ever says when they’re little ‘when i grow up i want to help support women who have been through narcissistic abuse or disempowering situations’. I actually wanted to be a food writer…. [cut to shot of me in Paris, swanning about gorgeous cafes, sampling coffee and patisserie and reviewing them and somehow people would pay me for this…💁 (wistful sigh).

So no, that was never the plan. I still remember the tarot reader/psychic telling me four years ago when I was holding back sobs in her office trying to find closure and figure what the AF had just happened to me (as I had just discovered the hellish experience I had just been through was called 'Narcissistic Abuse' and so sobbing was sortof My Thing at that time). My Pandora’s Box of every crap thing I had EVER felt bad about myself had well and truly been wedged open by that experience and even though I had tried to slam the box shut it was all just .... THERE.....

As the session went on, she basically repeated my worst nightmare - there she was telling me (as if it were a good thing) “that I would end up working in this field, that I would find something about ‘a golden thread’ (WHAT?!) and figure out a unique way of healing from it and then I would be able to help empower other women” . Ya. I was basically like

I wanted to run as far, far away from Pandora's Big Fat Box of Trauma as possible. That was NOT going to be my LIFE! I was, of course, still in trauma so of course didn’t want to hear anything remotely associated with that so I basically HOT-TAILED it out of her office.

And ignored it. I went on my merry way, focusing only on working on myself. I tried a lot of different healing modalities to deal with the Pandora’s Box of Crap that had come up - talk therapy, various holistic therapies, various energy work, feminine embodiment work, chakra healing, hypnotherapy and a bunch of Shamanistic things - some things worked and some things really didn’t and just made things worse (talking therapy was one).

In the end, the psychic was of course right. I somehow, through a lot of trying everything and learning to trust my intuition and a combination of things I was magically guided to, I stumbled upon my own system of healing and alchemising the pain into my own empowerment. And indeed found The Golden Thread she had so portentously referred to.

Which is Pandora’s deeper teaching - no matter how much darkness seems to be in the Box we all have inside our subconscious mind, what is left after that all flies out? Is hope. There is ALWAYS the golden thread.

Pandora’s Medicine:

Pandora asks us to delve into our Shadow Self - the self that has been pushed into a box or a closet as full of all those parts of ourselves we deem (or in fact, over time society or our family of origin or our school or our church or our media or our peers) has deemed unsavoury or should really not see the light of day. But when we cut ourselves off from these parts and deny the existence of our ‘darkness’ we cannot be fully whole, fully self-accepting of our flaws, fully human, fully imperfectly perfect.

Pandora’s medicine is to ask you with a curious attitude, to look deep under the surface (as that's where the gold lies!):

• What are your secrets, fears, phobias and demons?

• What are the disowned parts of yourself that you suppress, self-deprecate or talk yourself down because you’re scared to own your own light?

• What parts of you have you been hiding from the world for fear of judgement?

• You are not your trauma. How can you transcend the things that have happened to you and find wholeness within yourself despite those things?

• And even, eventually, are you able to find the gift in even your darkest experiences?

_______________________________________

If you have either:

• Been through the turmoil and trauma that is narcissistic abuse and are struggling to reclaim yourself OR

• You've noticed generally a pattern of self-sacrifice, difficulties with boundary-setting and self-confidence, self-worth and self-expression OR

• Faced with long-term quarantine and suddenly more time being left alone with your shadow during these strange #pandemictimes, you've noticed a part of you that is undermining your commitment and energy to go after what you really value

These could all be signs of an invitation from your Inner Goddess self to do some shadow work (or as I like to think of it - Light Excavation Work cos really we're bringing things into the light) and to look at how to alchemise these secret, hidden, suppressed parts of you that are leaving you feeling disempowered and seeing them as golden opportunities to step into full self-empowerment.

You deserve to feel wholeness and you deserve to feel like a TOTAL Goddess in your life, demons and all ;)

If you would like support with this, my new immersive 7 week holistic coaching and Goddess Energy work programme The Phoenix Goddess is coming out to support women through this work - and I'm sure you'll be thrilled to hear it involves absolutely

• No homework!

• No workbooks!

• No walking over hot coals or chanting or any cultish activity!

What it will be:

• Targeted, dedicated, totally tailored-to-you, one-to-one coaching & energy-work sessions for 90 minutes each week working to revitalise and EMPOWER each of the main 7 energy centres in your life with Goddess energy infused

• Beautiful Goddess ritual cards with suggestions for lush rituals you can do from home to support anchoring in the energy of the work

• A Goddess Gift!

If you're worried this type of tailored offering might be out of the budget right now it is absolutely my mission to support women in stepping out of the quagmire of toxic situations (or just generally, negative self-talk) and stepping into full self sovereignty so I’m currently accepting early-doors applications to the programme allowing for payment plans that can support you to access the work. Please contact me at templemail11@gmail.com however more information about the full programme will be posted HERE very shortly.